the cracks around the door, though Ana had stuffed a blanket along the door’s base.
Gabby flattened her palms on the glass and pushed up. The window shifted slightly but didn’t open even a bit. “Open the window, baby!”
Ana had her hands on the window, too, her face strained as she also pushed. “It’s stuck, Mom!”
“Unlock it,” Gabriela cried, spreading her feet to solidify her stance and put more strength into her effort.
“I did!”
The fear in Ana’s voice shattered Gabriela’s heart, but she did not let the pieces fall apart. Not yet.
She’d told the landlord about this window several times—that it had been sticking, that it didn’t slide right on its tracks. She’d told him again and again, and the bastard had never fixed it.
“Someone help!” Gabriela’s scream tore from her throat like it had been made of glass shards. She dropped onto her knees and dug into the snow, throwing aside handfuls of it as fast as she could in her search for something, for anything, buried beneath that could break the glass. “Help, please!”
Her fingers, somehow numb and burning at the same time, brushed something hard and heavy. She grasped the object immediately, dragging it out of the snow as she rose. “Stand back, baby.”
Ana backed away from the window, coughing, and Gabby swung the rock in her hand. It struck the double-paned glass with a dull thunk and a high crack. But only a tiny chip was left in the glass.
The smoke in Ana’s room was even denser now, and licks of flame were creeping in through the tiny gap at the top of the door. The paint around the edges was starting to blacken and peel. Ana was kneeling on her floor with a hand over her mouth, coughing over and over again.
“No,” Gabriela whispered, drawing back her arm for another blow. “No, no, no!”
She hit the window again, and again, putting a couple more chips in the glass. Her heart somehow sped further, pounding hard enough that it seemed likely to burst out of her chest. She raised the rock for another swing, and her foot slid in the snow. She pitched forward.
Big, strong arms banded around her middle, catching her before she could fall. Gabriela barely understood what was happening in her panic and desperation; she could only think of Ana, of getting to her little girl. She felt herself being lifted off the ground, felt her feet pulled free from the snow, and the next thing she knew she was sitting on her butt, staring up at Mason’s hulking form.
She caught a flash of reflected light in his eyes just before he turned to face the window.
“Ana,” she shouted, struggling to get to her feet.
Before she could fully rise, before she could even get the two syllables of her daughter’s name fully past her lips, Mason braced his hands on either side of the window frame, tipped his head back, and snapped it forward.
The sound of the window breaking echoed through the night, briefly rising above the growing roar of the flames. Gabriela was vaguely aware of falling shards of glass clinking together as they landed.
Mason tore off his shirt—Gabriela actually heard the fabric rip—and quickly wrapped it around his arm. He swept that arm around the inside of the window frame, clearing away the remaining shards.
“Throw your pillow over the glass,” he said to Ana in a booming voice as he tugged the ruined shirt off his arm and dropped it. He leaned into the open window, slipping his arms inside.
The light from Ana’s room had taken on an orange cast now, and smoke was pouring out through the broken window. Gabby held her breath, oblivious to the burning in her lungs and throat, to the numbing cold that had seized her feet and legs, and lifted her hands to her still-damp hair, sweeping it back before squeezing the strands between her fingers. She couldn’t see around Mason. She couldn’t see her daughter.
But she could hear Ana’s coughs, could hear her baby suffering.
Little arms wrapped around Mason’s neck. He withdrew from the window and spun to face Gabriela, holding Ana to his chest with one arm.
“Oh, God, thank you,” Gabriela breathed, knees suddenly weak.
Mason stepped over to her, and Gabriella threw her arms around Ana, who twisted to return her mother’s embrace with one arm. Ana was talking quickly, frantically, and Gabriela realized she was doing the same, but she couldn’t make out anything either of them were saying—and she didn’t care. Her